3/22/2006

Louise Fishman

132 comments:

Theres a fine line between photo studio material and a nice painterly abstraction. I'm not convinced that based on the Fishman's opposition to the male dominated scene that these are not in fact, more in the realm of backdrops or set pieces.

This painting is lovely. It doesn't really speak to me in any other way besides the terms of paint handling, mark-making, etc., but it is a great formalist achievement. At least what I can tell from the jpeg. Is this kind of work relevant now? The really good formalist painters still offer SOMETHING right? Seductive surfaces at the very least. At best primordial shapes that mysteriously stir the deep gray matter.

Primordial shapes that stir the deep gray matter..nice description BB. Your description makes a case. Dirty smeary Ab Ex - it means something so different now than it did back in the day. Sometimes I wonder what it must have felt like to make this kind of painting 50 years ago. Must have been so exciting. It is still a viable way of working certainly, but what makes some of it look old-fashioned and some of it feel contemporary? To me, these are accomplished and invigorating to look at but I end up feeling they are looking backward to the past too much.

free your mind and the rest will follow... i don't know HOW you people can ask to "be serious" YOU CAN'T GIVE A FORMAL CRIT TO A JPEG - MARKMAKING from a JPEG - FEH - FEH - FEH.. it is the most abstract thing i have heard of.. god. go to the show. go to the openings. spoon fed trusties.

No-where-man, if you don't believe it is possible to have a worthwhile discussion based on a jpg why are you even ON this blog?

What does "spoon fed trusties" have to do with ANYTHING? What do you actually know about the socio-economic demographic of the people on this blog?

And furthermore, if you are so critical of the format, why are you hyperlinking to OTHER JPGS?

Listen, no one here is under the illusion that a jpg is the same as the real thing, we just want to have an intelligent discussion about paintings, artists, art issues, etc etc, without being called names from people who have nothing useful to offer. If you feel like you are so above it all, start your own damn blog. Ot try actually contributing something CONSTRUCTIVE besides your half-baked criticisms and assumptions about the rest of us.

This blog is turning into a bunch of cranks, and that's sad because I used to really enjoy the discussion.

Listen, I have a serious finish fetish, so yeah, jpgs are great because then I can lick the screen. I think what you miss though, is the idea that paintings FUNCTION differently in the physical realm.

When some anonymous boob tells me to take my meds, dontcha think thats BS? Like if you dont follow what I am saying then I will elucidate, but thats kind of like explaining the punchline to a knock knock joke.

Whos there?

I think nowhere man meant the fools who dont contribute but just sling mud and blanket ad hominem attacks...

well said qv. I guess it could be helpful to state wether you've seen the work in person or not... I have not seen this particular work in person, but I have seen her work many times before. I just assume that people who have a lot to say about the work HAVE seen the work in person, but you know what happens when you assume...welcome back, MM.

I actually have not been directly commenting on the paintings I have not seen up close, because in my experience they can very different from a jpg, both better and worse. But there are still a lot of issues one can discuss, like the relevance of abstraction in 2006, the nature of markmaking, her position as a woman/Lesbian in the art world, etc etc. There are probably people on here who are not from NY, and couldn't see the shows if they wanted to, but they still have interesting perspectives to share. And if you want to coment on the work from a jpg, that's cool too. Again, I think we all understand that it is not the same as the real thing.

Zip, I really like your comments, though sometimes I do have trouble following you. In the future I'm gonna ask you to explain when I don't get it! No meds necessary. . .

just saying give zip some criet your often talking in abstractions/nonsense if it is 'morality' or 'surface'. if you clicked on the links you would notice they are not leading to 'jpegs' they are leading to a show up right now, a discussion on the work, political history of the artist and the opening. all which lead you to 'know about this painter'

you can crit a jpeg - especially since most have already seen the works in person before they pop up on the blog. what's a "formal crit" anyway? every option for dialog is viable.

i like some of fishman's paintings. they may be more ab-ex than contemporary (in that she's interested in process and the range of the human body as a tool), but i don't think they are nostalgic. i also don't think we've done all that can be done with this type of abstraction. personally, i'd rather see this kind of work than an abstract painting with a little yeti making a campfire in one corner. talk about backdrop. if that's contemporary, i prefer the old fashioned stuff.

you can crit a jpeg - especially since most have already seen the works in person before they pop up on the blog. what's a "formal crit" anyway? every option for dialog is viable.

i like some of fishman's paintings. they may be more ab-ex than contemporary (in that she's interested in process and the range of the human body as a tool), but i don't think they are nostalgic. i also don't think we've done all that can be done with this type of abstraction. personally, i'd rather see this kind of work than an abstract painting with a little yeti making a campfire in one corner. talk about backdrop. if that's contemporary, i prefer the old fashioned stuff.

Agree about the Yeti art. Which is too bad because I used to really like Yetis. Vigorous and forceful abstract expressionism when it's done well is thrilling. LF's palette is partly what makes them feel old-fashioned to me. But these brush smears are winners, they are gut-driven.

I'd like to see a yeti campfire painting!But as far as this painting goes, I feel like 'this type' of abstraction could still be interesting, but the vein of mock or post-modern expressionism (Richter, Lasker) has led to the 'decorator' brand of this abstract work becoming prominent now. I wish I had examples, but don't want to hurt feelings. Fishman is interested in the painting as an object in relation to human scale and movement and this I think has limitless possibilities...

Yetis are definitely nostalgic for a lot of people. I remmeber a naighbor kid hoaxing me in first grade - we went to make a plaster cast of the footprint....Very entertaining. ANs also, socially usefull. But a lie, nonetheless. There are no yetis in the suburbs.

I hope not of a Yeti painting, w.w.! Though that's a great handle. . .

Though I haven't seen the painting in person, what is amazing is that even in the jpg it has a great sense of space. Often these kinds of paintings are very dense or flat, but this almost feels like a whirlwind of strokes and paint, very airy and light despite the heavy colors. I think that is very interesting. . .can anyone who has seen it verify it that is true up close?

-if you like Eliz. P then why don't you like all inept 16-year old piainters, similarly

-if you like the "paint handling" on this painting, then why don't you like every single palette, smock, art,school wall, etc, which has had a bunch of muddy mixed colors casually dragged across it? Or do you?

ww, I'm thinking of people like Fabian Marcaccio, who paint 'the idea' of the brushstroke. This was kind of a funny thread post ab ex, but there's really no point in doing work like that any more. Lasker's a bad example, b/c he has a lot more going on in the paintings than just faux-brushstrokes, like new ideas of space, drawing as painting...I do not think you are a feigning expressionism or commenting on 'the stroke' based on what i've seen, ww.

this painting is rather beautiful. However, it speaks in contemporary terms in only a few subtle elements, not really enough to gratify me with a "meaningful" dialogue. Overall it contains a sort of joyous, windwept feeling which definitely distances itself from ab-ex....furthermore certain spatial areas and the prussian rub/smears in top left recalls richter's abstract methods, though in an offhand way, maybe not intentional. Haven't seen these in person but her work always felt retrogressive to me.

--A smock or a palette would never look like this. Go see the show, look more closely. You are not seeing enough.---

saw the show--you mean to say I'm not seeing what you see--I really want to figure out what you see, though--how is the paint handling here NOT like the basic smears that come up when anyone tries to get paint on a surface as soon as possible?

I don't just want to voice my dislike of the artist, I genuinely want to know what makes these marks seem unique to other people.

You betta write my name in ALL CAPS if you want get in my good graces, bitchez. Life's been pretty easy lately. All my friends think I'm retired! I shared a 40 oz. with Ms. Schutz last nite. I ain't sayin' nuthin'... but she's a sweet kid, yo.

ughh-- the comments on here make me want to puke. "lovely"-- "nice" ????? arghhhhh. joyous and windswept??? you REALLY dont get it at ALL. LF paints harsh, purposefully difficult, challenging paintings full of the original feelings that abex was about: sorrow, tragedy, grief, anger, rage, FEELINGS in the face of death, WWII, and a confrontation w/ ugliness-- most of which has been swept (windswept?) away by the prozac nation. if you havent seen her work ever, you should just go see it for awhile, like a show or two, before you make comments on a jpg. she has been showing for thirty years or so in nyc!!! this is a formidable painter! she is not pomo, she has nothing whatsoever to do w/ marcaccio, peyton, or the "idea" of a brushstroke. she's old school.

Its allways weird when someone sees something you don't and visa versa.

One of the things one could say about this painting is that there is a directedness about the strokes. TO me it feels as if they are camoflauging something beneath - not merely by whitewashing it, but by creating a pattern that resists interpretation and thus disguises the intent and thus the underpainting, more effectively.

Directedness can be random, but still appear agented, or visa versa. This is a big deal to a lot of people for a while, and it ties into ideas about artificial intelligence now and dada/surrealism before.

I tend to think a lot of abstract painters are the devil. Hard to tell.

As far as real feelings and so on - well i'm a machine. I can fake it. Art is the lie that tells the truth. The truth is out there. Truthiness. War is peace. Doublespeak is the mind killer. I'm tired of learning new programs. I'm tired of the program. I'm tired of the tilt a whirl. Bring back gravitas. The center cannot hold.

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle."

I am learning a lot thinking about ab ex and collage. The radicality and gravitas as Zip put it of the original purpose behind these two movements...how can you get that back without repeating the past? It means something else now. It's in this cleaned up blue chip gallery. I am just wondering, I love what LF's work stands for and I love the straightforward ugliness, the lack of posture. There just this big "but" hovering around and I don't mean my butt.

To anon, I was just trying to give her credit. Expressing rage and discontent through abex is a completely absurd proposition. If she was painting like this 30 years ago, thats still 20 years too late to do what you propose.To be in the 21st century as a painter and call this work ugly (in a powerful way) is just unfathomable and furthermore completely besides the point. I used words like windswept and lovely because to me the methodology of abex can only be viewed as quaint in contemporary time. I could even find this painting cute, in that formalism as a means to itself is such a passe proposition, but to tell me that this painting should communicate rage against wwII is ridiculous.

finger painting? have u seen them in person?what do you think about say of the oeuvre de kooning or rauschenberg we have seen full shows of there recent work from in the area. do you think that the 'work' comes out of a different place from when they started? is there a 'resolution piece' where the old feelings, issues went away? what of 'notions of progress? should artists have to be 'of the now'? is art/society evolving on a linear track?

mm, perhaps we need to think about the work not in terms of what it "stands for" but rather what it "is." we cannot view brushstrokes as symbolic. they can carry history but they are not "historical." the fact that this type of abstraction means something else now is not just because it's in a blue chip gallery. it was MADE recently. how can that possibly be overshadowed by the fact that it merely "looks" like work made in the past? i feel like this discussion is happening outside of the work on view - as if it's unacceptable to continue an investigation past the point of its subjective relevance. i think this is not only counterintuitive, but it robs the painting of any real identity intended by the artist.

Sure, I totally get what you're saying, WW. I am just trying to understand. Gesture in paint is personally meaningful to me as well - and I understand that LF's work was made now - but it is made in a similar way to work made 50 years ago, the original sense of ab ex being radical is gone, or at least changed. Its placement in blue chip gallery does not nec. give it its meaning, but ab ex is now a style among many styles, not a radical act. The terms have changed. It's not to say chum-hurling is not relevant - it's just how do you make it contemporary. From what I have seen of your work, this is not your problem.

that's an interesting topic - how are works seen separately from their historic context? obviously from the posts above a work's original intentions don't necessarily carry through to new viewers - is this a fault of the work or the viewer? i think since a painting is static it can't help but be viewed in new contexts - we're constantly recreating old works by reviewing them and seeing them in light of current concerns. i saw fishman's work and it is much different in person - the scale makes them much more aggressive. they're powerful paintings. i think that her situation is unique in that she's been painting in this manner for years - she isn't a grad student slinging paint - this has been a lifelong concern - so there's some extra weight to that. you really can't judge this as a stylistic decision in the sense that next season she'll be moving on to the latest trend, there's a serious commitment to the work that should be acknowledged.

it is a contaminated palette. i wouldn't necessarily say ballsy, but it's definitely not conservative. actually, i think the palette in this one is pretty contemporary.

in my opinion, gestural abstraction could possibly be more relevant now, without all the bullshit pseudo-politics and greenbergian crap that turned AbEx into a style rather than an investigation. unfinished business as far as i'm concerned.

i find people's attempts to bring in historical context here ridiculous--if you look at a picture for more than a few minutes, then the historical elements and the personality of the artist drop away and you're on your own with the work.

unless you're the kind of people who'd stare at an autographed football for hours.

frogger, i totally agree. paintings are static and constantly being viewed in new contexts, so they keep contributing in new and different ways. at times they give nothing. then they're amazing again. some have a degree of timelessness, some do not. personally, i think timelessness is overrated. my favorite paintings are topical, if not in subject matter then in feeling. they are signs of the times.

yes ww, but pseudo-politics affects all art (see D. Schutz.) I think historical and formal responses are both important and effective ways to analyze art. One is not right while the other is wrong.I think the relevancy question is pertinent: all artists should be questioning their work throughout their career. An artist shouldn't just change styles with the seasons, but they shouldn't put blinders on to what's going on in the world. I agree with MM in that the palette makes this painting look dated (although this might not be the case in person.) But yes, a lot can still be said with the gesture. Maybe an historical context of her ideas would be a helpful way to look at this work, but I doubt it. I don't gather that she's a lesbian from this work any more than I see the 'lesbian' in Mehretu's work. Nor do I see anything relating to WWII. It seems more like a personal language of markmaking to me.

cool. but i still think "looking dated" is totally relative and subject to any number of variables that would swing things another way. if you hadn't already seen a bunch of AbEx paintings, your point of reference wouldn't be what it is. for this reason, i support the use of blinders. except while actually painting. unless that is the effect you are going for.

I often think about whether artists have a responsibility to change their work when it goes out of style. Or when it isn't bringing them critical or commercial success. I feel somewhat torn when it considering the validity of making "ab-ex" style work in 2006. Instinctively I feel like it no longer works without the context of that period. But then I think about how crucial it is to believe in what you do, even when it isn't popular. Have you ever read Daybook, the memoir of the sculptor Anne Truitt? She worked for years and years on her idea (which involved painting on columns), had some success and is now largely forgotten. I so respected her practice and incredible dedication as an artist, but when does that turn into a rut, or blinders that its not working, that the only person who can see it is you?

Violet, I often think about whether artists have a responsibility to change their work when it goes out of style.

This is a good question with no real answer. Younger artists might be working in the style of the moment, what was happening, their influences while they were in school. As you work some approaches fit personally and some don't so you choose what you like, or what seems "in style" at the moment. But, over time, chasing the style of the moment works against you because you must look outside yourself for inspiration. I appears to me that as artists get older it is harder for them to make big changes, either because of market pressures or just because they have found their own way. Even Guston, who made a radical change late in his career, just reconnected with his earlier work. (with great success)

I can understand the debate here over Fishman's paintings. She is working through something she started long ago and today the style of the work seems stuck in the past. That's ok for her as it is the result of working over time. For a younger artist, trying to work today in the same style would carry a lot of baggage under the guise of "I'm making art because it looks like how (some validated past style of) art looks" The gestural approach will always be valid but I think today one would need to find a fresh approach.

I don't think it matters all that much whether or not people here like Fishmans work, it's primarily a matter of taste. Fishman is a good painter but if you hate her paintings you know something about yourself which is probably more important than anything else.

omg, those new Prieto's are so cheesy. What gives Californians the right to put text on their paintings without any conceptual testicles. Heck, text on anything is so 1980. Kruger, Holzer, Bochner...yuck.

wow - that list has a lot of variety ww. People who blossomed over many decades. I'm not sure why, but someone like Davies looks so much more 'contemporary' than Fishman. I guess it's the 'affected stroke'. Weiser of course looks even more contemporary. Not meaning better or having more invested, just more contemporary, more unlike something from the past. The big knock on Cecily, was that her work was too indebted to the past, but recently, her work has started to look more contemporary. I guess deciding if something is relevant is as personal as how you decide to paint.

bb, i guess i don't judge in terms of relevance. it's a consideration, but not a criteria. i do think of it with my own work, but i try not to ever think chronologically. i freeze up. making a list was hard because i realized that most painters will not succumb to complete abstraction. they don't believe in it i guess. they hang on to some little thingy; for me it was piles of wood for a long time. then i had to let go. i realized the wood meant nothing to me. we were codependent. it's funny, but i actually discredit painters when they look too contemporary. it is suspicious or too decisive; too clever. now i'm beginning to think that it's the digging up of something that started to happen but was never fleshed out (like the isolated mark - a la lichtenstein, or david reed) that is the route to unchartered territory, i.e. originality.

I also like Prieto's last show. Hmmm. The isolated mark. Well, there's someone that can make anything great. Look at Ingo Meller... Those are great f***ing paintings! All you can do is make something fresh and new for yourself and maybe others will agree. And yes, just because something's might not be relevant now in the popular imagination, doesn't mean that it won't be extremely relevant later on. Look at the pre-Raphaelites. Who ever thought that would be talked about as 'important' or 'relevant' ever again? But now it is in some circles... so i guess current relevancy does not connote quality.

Well, WW...perfect is a strange term. I mean, I love Cezanne, but would never even come close to the 'p' word even after a Barnes visit or a Phillips, Met or Louvre run. Heck, I like your list for it's personality. My list is similiarily upside down with conceptualists, painter's painters, and has beens. I thought Bernard Frieze was perfect in one painting once.

"All you can do is make something fresh and new for yourself and maybe others will agree."

Yes, and look at paintings you like with a fresh eye, often older work, even a century older, when viewed with an inquiring eye can be a great source. Toulouse Lautrec was a very influential painter in his time but still can be learned from today.

The strange thing about Frieze is that he is essentially a conceptualist process thingy guy...and we (maybe) like him for the looks...this is essentially the new dilemna for young painters..we like things yet misunderstand them. The older generation mistrusts us...let the whole thing happen again.

"omg, those new Prieto's are so cheesy. What gives Californians the right to put text on their paintings without any conceptual testicles. Heck, text on anything is so 1980. Kruger, Holzer, Bochner...yuck."

I like the Rusha and I like the Monique Prieto and I like the Frize (thanks for the link). Maybe its because I just ate. Food is good.

Essentially painting makes you feel. I like feeling sometimes. Other times I drink honeydew and suck energy from the aphid people.

Feeling is a kind of thinking, just not a symbolic or rational form. The non-rational is not irrational. There is nothing weak about thinking non-rationally. The proof is in the pudding.

The Fishman show - maybe it was not lit properly. Does Fishman have one of those ultra bright studios with the skylight and banks of bulbs? because I think she does. More light! Fists of light! Maybe its a sort of Raplph Ellison thing.

nice i like that ww. it is perfect & - the "'cheezy works" some how as a jpeg - And i bet it is great in the gallerysome times for me it translates well online and you get the feeling the artist would think "boring" could also mean.... not quite getting it.

go to Boston University. They attach weiners to the men who paint pure abstractions. If you verge into pop art they eat the dogs with the other dogs. Oh, I am sorry to bash Ruscha...it was an opinion...don't get so emotional about paintings that are actually made to do the opposite...weirdriew.

you should do whatever you want to do that way you can't fail. you will figure out y in the doing, and if you don't feel like doing it any more do something else there is no shame in that. only then will you find your voice.

Methods...strategies. Projects. Hmm, I am into super cold formalism lately. Not Ellsworth Kelly green or Alber yellow, but graphic design without the shapes, advertisement and communication. I guess just paint, but not brushstrokes or drips or tape. Hmm, I guess there is not much left. So, that is what I am doing.

Richard Phillips once fucked Ann Coulter in her pooper. While Fishman paid to watch. In a motel. A midwestern motel. They each made paintings about that storied night. Find the paintings, compare, and discuss. Yes, I said pooper. Pick up the gun. Go ahead, pick it up.

Yes, I 'feel' the marks in an ahistorical manner, I find the smearing of the paint so resonant, I respect their intellect but find the misogynist content problematic, blah blah blah

"McCarthy was not tilting at windmills. He was tilting at an authentic communist conspiracy that had been laughed off by the Democratic Party. The Democrats had unpardonably connived with the greatest evil of the 20th century. This could not be nullified. But liberals could at least hope to redeem the Democratic Party by dedicating themselves to rewriting history and blackening reputations. This is what liberals had done repeatedly throughout the Cold War. At every strategic moment this century, liberals would wage a campaign of horrendous lies and disinformation simply to dull the discovery the American people had made. They had gotten good at it."

I think so, you may not. Heres another one - how cumn Gherhard Richter gets all that press for his piece of shit abstactions about the war and nerry a peep for Fishman's piece of shit abstractions? Teach me oh learned ones.

No, we're not talking about Louise Fishmsn's paintings. Because you soporific bastards have killed any desire I have to take the piss out of contemporary painting. This place is like a fucking yawn factory. Excelsior!

Both. These works are figurative or I'm just succumbing to the amthropomorphizing urge. Can someone make me a Louise Fishman screensaver slideshow? I'll give them a free rubdown.

Hauntology

The relevance of a trope of spectrality to deconstruction is clear . Ghosts are neither dead nor alive, neither corporeal objects nor stern absences. As such, they are the stock-in-trade of the Derridean enterprise, standing in defiance of binary oppositions such as presence and absence, body and spirit, past and present, life and death. For deconstruction, these terms cannot stand in clear, independent opposition to one another, as each can be shown to possess an element or trace of the term that it is meant to oppose. In the figure of the ghost, we see that past and present cannot be neatly separated from one another, as any idea of the present is always constituted through the difference and deferral of the past, as well as anticipations of the future. And so the liminal spirit, or to use Derrida's favoured term, revenant, the thing that returns, comes to represent a mobilization of familiar Derridean concepts such as trace, iteration and the deferral of presence.

Jusat raking the rocks. I am a flexible goat to the Pipe mind of the dream. I am the gravel to the road, the WPA to the project, the toad to the stool. I am a pigeon to the air, wind to the dream, a tunnel to the light. cleaner than a steamed crab. Spicer than old bay, greener than tea. Salt to the stew, lithium to the battery. Power to the people.

Can't say i follow all those connections - last night i was working on "elucidate on her life and times and how that relates to her abstract paintings" when it hit me i should try to think a little harder about the actually abstraction and less about the politics. in my own experience the nearest i got to it was a 6th month stint in charcoal with trying to chase a moving shadow (but then that was still a representative 'thing' at a level').

How she even got remotely connected with "anti-McCarthy liberals" and let alone with such anger is beyond my scope of knowledge. And on the midwest thing - i don't know what to say i guess i lack a certain caustic edge - the Artworld has been very good to me over all.

". Because you soporific bastards have killed any desire I have to take the piss out of contemporary painting"

PM - clearly you lacked the desire to begin with. take your ball and leave.

Oh my god, you really are no fun, no-where. There are no connections. It's called a non sequitur. If you want a definition, look to zipthwung. Now I must away, before I fall violently asleep from reading your post.